Ah Rare-Ware, one of the best video
game companies in the SNES and N64 era. They were constantly putting out good
games, from Banjo-Kazooie to Goldeneye; it was nothing but greatness that came
out of them. But one of the franchises they are most known for is the Donkey
Kong country trilogy on the SNES; they took a simple arcade game and turned it
into an amazing Mario styled platformer. With its success they made 2 more, but
they didn’t stop there. Much like Mario and Zelda, Donkey Kong was brought into
the 3rd dimension on the Nintendo 64 with Donkey Kong 64. DK64
follows the same formula as Banjo-Kazzoie, (which was already following Mario
64) as you will notice it is very similar to Banjo in a lot of ways, but enough
monkey business, (see what I did there? Yea I know that wasn’t funny…) let’s go
right in.

Donkey Kong is back in a bigger and
better adventure; he’s bigger, faster, and stronger too…or at least that’s what
the infamous DK rap that plays when you start the game wants you to believe. He
is no where near as fast as he was in the country games, but he is certainly

bigger! Remember when DK Island was big enough to hold a jungle, forest, temple
ruins, and snowy mountains? Well now DK Island is only as big as a four story
building, but it’s a lot bigger on the inside…wait a second, DK Island is a big
Tardus? That explains how he can go from world to world so easily. But I
digress. This game now has 5 different Kongs to play as, Donkey Kong, the
leader of the Kong Klan making a triumphant return after not being playable in
the last 2 games (seriously you would think in a series called DONKEY Kong
country Donkey Kong would be playable in more than just 1 of them), Diddy Kong,
who was also in the country games, and 3 new Kongs. Unfortunately Dixie Kong ... Read the rest of this Review

UN GROOVY
Earthworm Jim 3D for the Nintendo 64 is the first (and only) 3D EWJ game. This was
the first EWJ game I played. The game begins when Jim gets crushed by the N64 logo
and then also a cow which causes him to literally lose his marbles. Jim is at the
hospital with little chance to recover his sanity. But Jim's super ego is called in
to save Jim's sanity by collecting all the marbles scattered throughout Jim’s
brains. Now this might sound like the greatest plot to a game ever, but the game
itself doesn't hold up to the epic story.

After the intro, Jim's ego exits an elevator, and you hear the best line in this
game. You hear a voice that says "There's only one ego for this job AND ITS A REALLY
BIG ONE!" I love that line, and it’s probably the best thing about this game. This
strange and bizarre looking place is your small hub world inside Jim's head (you can
tell that he’s not really smart). There are four brains: memory, happiness, fear,
and fantasy. Only memory is accessible at the start. Before you can go into memory,
you are given a golden cow udder. Yes, you heard right, a golden udder. I'm not sure
if I should think that it is awesome or terrifying. Maybe it is just awesomely
terrifying. The way Jim opens the door to memory is by playing the golden udder like
a set of bag pipes. Moving on…you need golden udders to open each brain. In each
brain there are 3 doors; two of the doors are levels, and the last door is the boss.
In order to access more levels, Jim needs to be smarter. The more marbles you
collect, the smarter Jim gets.

Jim has two ways of attacking. First is his trademark head whip, which isn’t that
useful, because it’s short range and most of the enemies shoot you before get close
enough (bringing a head to a gun fight). His main weapon is his laser Uzi, but you
can get better, more powerfu... Read the rest of this Review